The Instagram Impact: 2017 in Numbers

Instagram, everyone’s favourite photo sharing social network has seen an exceptional year in 2017 and is fast becoming a first choice platform for businesses to advertise on. Whether actively managing a brand account, advertising through influencers or sponsored posts; it can put your brand front and centre in front of an audience you can engage with using imagery.

Instagram currently has over 600 million active users, of which 400 million are active daily. 25 million of these are registered businesses and the platform now has over 1 million active advertisers; an astonishing increase from the 200,000 reported in March 2016.

Instagram has just released its full report detailing some key data including the most popular accounts, most used filters and of course the most liked photos. We’ve taken the key points and broken them down for you below. Happy snapping! #NoFilter.

The Most Liked Photo

Beyoncé carries the crown for the most liked picture of 2017, with over 11,000,000 likes on her pregnancy announcement in February.

The top 10 most liked photos are from only 3 accounts, with Beyoncé taking positions 1 and 4. Next up is Cristiano Ronaldo with 2, 5 and 8. The other 5 came from Selena Gomez.

The Most Watched Celebrity Video

He may have taken only two spots in the top 10 photos, but the power of Cristiano Ronaldo in video saw him take 5 of the top 10 most watch celebrity videos including position 1.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BZl9v6YFStc/

The rest of the top 10 were taken by Selena Gomez and Leo Messi with two spots each and finally rounding off was Emilia Clarke whose video of Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) standing on a cliff, swishing a cape and pretending to be a dragon because one of the viral hits of 2017.

What’s Next For Instagram

In recent days reports have surfaced which showed off some new features for Instagram which are being tested by a very small selection of users. The new features some of which will make it into the app, and of course some won’t based on feedback, but a majority of them are great additions with a couple which aren’t. We’ll let you decide from the list below.

REGRAM! – This is possibly the most requested features from users and it appears that Instagram is working on a native regram button so users can share posts from others. A few third-party apps make this possible now, but they’re shady and you shouldn’t be giving you logins to another app you don’t trust. Or you can screenshot, then edit and crop and reshare but it takes time. A regram button would fix all of that.

GIFS! – This we feel isn’t a good idea, we get enough of the same gifs over and over again on Twitter, we don’t need it on Instagram in stories or regular posts.

STORY ARCHIVES! – We love stories on Instagram and this new feature will allow users to keep an archive of all pictures you add to your story. You’ll be able to relive all of those drunken story additions forever.

CLOSE FRIENDS! – The testing for this was earlier in the year so whether it will launch or not is still unknown, but close friends will allow you to add people to a closed list and then only share images or videos with those people.

WHATSAPP! – We’ve already got “Share to Facebook” and soon we could have “Share to Whatsapp” if recent tests are anything to go by. We’re still hoping that Instagram will allow proper image sharing on Twitter again.

FOLLOW HASHTAGS! – This one would be really useful, allowing users to follow hashtags and be able to see all of the related posts within the main feed. #CatsofInstagram.

How Do I Advertise On Instagram?

The question you need to ask before that is “Should I Be Advertising on Instagram?”. Would your business benefit from exposure on Instagram? A majority of users are between 18-29, if this is your target audience then dependant on the industry you’re in, it could work extremely well for you like it has for many of our clients.

Get in touch with our teams and we can discuss whether Instagram is the right option for your business, or whether you could benefit from another channel of Digital Marketing. Find out more about of Social Media Marketing here, or click the Lets Talk button in the top right, we can’t wait to hear from you.

Finally, don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and you can check in the with latest from the Climb Online HQ!

The Top 10 Hashtags

Organic reach with Instagram can be great when you use the right hashtags alongside your photo or video. The top 10 used in 2017 are:

#love

#fashion

#photooftheday

#photography

#art

#beautiful

#travel

#happy

#nature

#picoftheday

Tip: Don’t add hashtags because you can, only add them when your upload is relevant to the hashtag you’re using.

The Most Instagrammed Cities

If you’re travelling, there is no shame in showing off where you are and Instagram is notorious for a lot of pictures of the same places with a multitude of different filters.

New York, New York

London, United Kingdom

Moscow, Russia

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Paris, France

Los Angeles, California

Saint Petersburg, Russia

Jakarta, Indonesia

Istanbul, Turkey

Barcelona, Spain

Tip: Try and get a shot of something unusual in a city, chances are your followers don’t want to see Big Ben for the millionth time.

The Top 10 Instagrammed Locations

Following cities we have locations and the USA proves to be most the most popular place for photos of places with 7 of the top 10 spots taken there.

Disneyland, Anaheim, USA

Times Square, New York City, USA

Central Park, New York City, USA

Tour Eiffel, Paris, France

Tokyo Disneyland, Tokyo, Japan

Disney’s Magic Kingdom, Orlando, USA

Musée du Louvre, Paris, France

Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn, USA

Disney California Adventure Park, Anaheim, USA

Las Vegas Strip, Las Vegas, USA

Number one was, of course, Disneyland, and who doesn’t want to look at millions of photos of the most magical place on earth?

The Most Followed Celebrities

Celebrities need a loyal following to remain as celebrities and social media has gotten us closer to the stars than ever before. The top 10 most followed celebrities on Instagram are:

Did your favourite celebrity make the list? Between Ariana’s dogs, Beyoncé’s pregnancy reveal, Kim Kardashian West breaking the internet, Kylie’s lip kits, Justin’s shirtless selfies and Taylor’s infamous snake teaser for her upcoming album; the stars sure do love using Instagram for promotion.

Most-used Instagram Filters

We all love a filter, despite the new #nofilter trend, in which everybody uses a filter anyway (no one looks that flawless when they wake up). The top filters used on Instagram in 2017 were:

Clarendon

Gingham

Juno

Lark

Moon

Did you know that 60% of businesses on Instagram only use one filter when posting images? Our favourite is the classic Clarendon.

Most-used Instagram Stories Face Filters

Look, we know they stole it from Snapchat but the hard reality is when Instagram launched stories, the amount being on created on Snapchat dropped rapidly and has stayed down as users jumped platforms. The top story face filters in 2017 are:

Puppy

Bunny

Koala

Genius

Love

The puppy one makes everyone look incredible, so its no surprise at all that it took the top spot.

Most-followed Pets on Instagram

Forget celebrities, the pets are the real stars of Instagram. They wear cute clothes, pull cute faces and do funnier stuff than humans.